Santa and Al-Shabab at the Galleria

Pre-Christmas Victoria’s Secret Special: Women’s Thongs Half-Off (nice...)

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com

Deer al-Shabab:

I want a Big Hugs Elmo, and a nuw iPad for Cristmasss. I have been reel good. Thanks yu.

Barak Obama, Wurshintun, DC

It was CNN’s way of perpetuating the Doctrine of Fear: It’s good for government; it’s good for you. I won’t bother linking you over to the story on CNN.com wherein they speculated as to the likelihood of an al-Shabab-style attack at your local Galleria. Suffice to say that the article (which I scanned but could not read in depth) in title alone was a pithy reminder of why I (we) turned off the television ten years ago for good.

One can know all one needs to know from books (remember those off-white, leafy things that are still popularly sold in some coffee boutiques and at yard sales?) and through various quality news  and opinion sources on the Net, like this publication.

That night, though, I imagined millions of families sitting about their living rooms saturated with fear as CNN’s “journalist” hypothesized how a similar take-over of the Galleria up the street  in Anytown, USA, might occur at any minute as you meandered your way past cellphone kiosks, the Banana Republic, and glimpsed the latest larger-than-life photos of dewy young girls modeling Victoria’s Secret thongs.

With Christmas fast approaching, we wonder if Santa’s brightly painted throne might soon be occupied by someone more closely resembling a member of Boko Haram:

Santa and his Elves: Children will fidget less and get right to the point...and no crying!

I had visions of Robin Sparkles singing, “Let’s go to the Mall...” with a thick Middle Eastern accent, dressed in a revealing Burka and wielding an AK47, exposing a vest of explosives covering her torso. (A HYMYM reference: You don’t need television to stay up-to-date on funny, albeit made-for-television programming. That’s why you have a DVD player and why God created Netflix.)

Pervasive messages of Fear: The reason we turned off the television for good ten years ago.

“Now it will be easy to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal...” Sounds like something Obama or GWB might have said, doesn’t it? It was actually first uttered by Joseph Goebbels - Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda - but became standard operating procedure for every administration in Washington for the last 20 years.

Think about that every time you turn on your television.

Stay involved and stay up-to-date, but develop a sense of objectivity and reason. Before you know it, you’ll be thinking independently, and voting Independent having recognized that you were hitherto being fed substantial helpings of government-orchestrated bullshit.